Via Memeorandum, this interview with FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, which had this snippet:
If this had been law prior to 2008, would we have seen the bailouts that took place? Would we have seen capital injections into banks?
BAIR: No. You could not do an AIG, Bear Stearns, or any of that. Those were all one-off things, capital or asset guarantee transactions. This bill would only allow system-wide liquidity support which could not be targeted at an individual firm. You can’t do capital investments at all, period. It’s only liquidity support. No more capital investments. That’s banned under all circumstances.
You can do systemwide liquidity support. But you can’t do anything on an individual basis. They would have to be generally available.
Do you see any way left for the government to bail out a financial institution?
BAIR: No, and that’s the whole idea. It was too easy for institutions to come and ask for help. They aren’t going to do that. This gives us a response: “Fine, we will take all these essential services and put them in a bridge bank. We will keep them running while your shareholders and debtors take all your losses. And oh, by the way, we are getting rid of your board and you, too.”
The whole idea is to get market discipline back.
That’s what ending “too big to fail means.” It means debtors and shareholders understanding their money is at risk and especially the debtholders starting to look at the balance sheet of these big institutions and asking their own hard questions instead of relying on government support.
When Mitch McConnell took to the cameras spewing his Frank Luntz talking points, this is what pissed me off the most (once you get past the instant “CAN’T YOU MOTHERFUCKERS EVER TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING!”)- what he was doing was trying to kill a bill that would end the bailouts. And if he succeeded, he would be doing the banksters bidding.
They don’t want what Bair just described. They like things just the way it is right now- they can put a gun to the head of the economy and tell us “If I go down, I’m taking everyone of you with me.” They like how things went down the last time- Goldman got every penny off their bets with AIG, all paid for by you and me. Then they went around and lavished huge bonuses on themselves when they weren’t busy writing whiny op-eds about how unfair it is everyone hates them.
With this bill, if the legislators and regulators have it right, these scumbags screw up again, they get wiped out. Shareholders get destroyed, and the board is replaced.
Wall Street and the bankstas don’t want that- which is why they flew Cornyn and McConnell to NY, told them they would bankroll the Republicans if only they killed this bill, and McConnell went right to the Senate podium and lied his ass off. Not only was he lying, but he was doing everything he could to make sure there would be bailouts forever. Understand what he was doing.
It’s just that simple. McConnell was selling the country and the American taxpayer down the river for a chance at flooding the airwaves with campaign ads funded by Wall Street, made possible by the right wing Supreme Court.
matt
Glenn Beck is strongly arguing for defense budget cuts right now. MY HEAD IT MELTS
tc125231
Your comments are mostly correct. Nice work.
Montysano
@matt:
Glenn Beck is strongly arguing for defense budget cuts right now
GregB
Has anyone ever done a focus group to find out why Frank Luntz hates America?
Citizen Alan
I would pay everything I have in the bank right now (admittedly not much) for the privilege of getting in that chinless freak Mitch McConnell’s face and screaming at him that he was a traitor to his country. Because as far as I’m concerned, selling out your country to the domestic banking industry is every bit as treasonous as selling it out to a foreign power. Possibly worse, since few foreign powers have the resources and cojones to bribe influential U.S. Senators into betraying the whole country the way Repukes do on a weekly basis.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
This type of strategy has a high clusterfuck yourself ratio. He is gambling that dems won’t take up his challenge and really get draconian in regulating banks. A lot of dems would jump at that bait. Too clever by half.
Moonbatting Average
@matt: Even batshit insane clocks are right twice per zucchini.
Sentient Puddle
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: And to underline the point, even Blanche freakin’ Lincoln, of all people, wants to regulate derivatives within an inch of their existence. McConnell took a bad gamble on this one.
Calouste
When they are going to close the bank and sack the board, are they going to claw back all the salary and bonusses paid to the board and senior execs going back a decade or so?
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Sheila Bair is a Republican. I think. She worked for Dole, anyway, and ran as one once.
So why is she talking to The American Banker and not CNN?
if she cares about this, and she clearly does, why doesn’t she call them out as liars? She’d be effective. Say “I’m a Republican and I object to what leadership is doing: this is an outright lie and harmful to the country”
The paragraph preceding the interview indicates that this is a matter of dispute. It’s not. They’re lying.
Why isn’t she making a whole lot of noise?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay: Because no republican, honest or not, wants to have the tea bag monster after them. And it doesn’t take much for them to get the RINO scent and go on the rampage for scalps.
Tom Hilton
I love Barney Frank’s comment (via Mark Warner via Ezra Klein that “We’re creating death panels.” No institution is too big to die…and that’s what scares the financial services industry.
Svlad Jelly
What the fuck is “system-wide liquidity support”? What does that mean?
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
You know, her whole thing is “moderate responsible Kansas Republican”. I read a long article about her. She was absolutely appalled at the banking melt-down.
I expect her to make a lot of noise, if I’m paying her, and I am. She has a goddamn duty to call them out. This is outrageous.
Time to drop the impartial arbiter bit. This is her work they’re attacking, if she needs any further inspiration.
HumboldtBlue
It means McConnell wants you to eat cilantro in every dish you eat every day of the year. That’s how much he and the Republicans hate you and America.
LittlePig
McConnell was selling the country and the American taxpayer down the river for a chance at flooding the airwaves with campaign ads funded by Wall Street, made possible by the right wing Supreme Court.
Uhhh, didn’t everybody know that?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Svlad Jelly: I would guess it’s like a fund paid into a general risk pool, whereby if one company fucks up and goes off the reasonable risk reservation, all the others have to pay for it. Sorta like workman’s comp, or a similar principle.
Ash Can
It’s my fondest wish that the media idiots figure out McConnell’s angle and report and comment on it accordingly. Realistically, however, I expect them not only to drop the ball, but to be complicit in this bullshit.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay: LOL, you are likely right, but she gets a lot of leeway for being the only Bush appointee to early on sound the alarm on the mortgage meltdown and was made persona non grata for her trouble. Even by some of the same characters leading Obama’s econ. team.
Chuck
@matt:
Of course he wants the military cut, the Wrong Person is Commander In Chief after all. Mind you I’ve got no problems if said CIC obliged, but Beck’s motivations are generally something paranoid and wackadoodle.
soonergrunt
I stopped worrying about it. This is business as usual for the repubs and the press
WereBear
McConnell is a goddamn robot!
/Alien
El Cid
FDR’s soshullist bank reforms put us on the path to perpetual crashes and bailouts. The fact that these didn’t occur until 54 years later after 6 years of Ronald Reagan being in office in no way contradicts that it was FDR’s fault.
flukebucket
Tune in tomorrow for some serious back-pedaling.
The dumb ass has lost the plot.
MattF
Golly John, any day now we’ll have you reciting “From each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs.”
Ash Can
I do wonder how he’s spinning this so that his Frankenstein’s monster of an audience doesn’t turn on him. (No, I’m not going to tune in to find out; I’m not that curious.)
General Egali Tarian Stuck
OT
And here is the downside to the tea bag phenom, or this is bad news for republicans. Look for more of this sort of thing. It is how third parties form to kill a dying one.
anonymous
Let them die!
AhabTRuler
Does anyone else have the perverse desire to email John complaining of the lack of advertising?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
The Democrats need to make good on their promise of transparency and demand 100% of the debate on this bill be shown on C-Span so McConnell has to do Wall Street’s bidding in front of the American people.
Mark S.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Am I missing your point? That looked like run of the mill “Kenyan Usurper is the most radical communist in history” drivel that you can read on any conservative web site. Was there something in particular that was different in this article?
Jay C
“Campaign ads” for what? A GOP platform of “repeal and replace” for finance-regulation? So that Big Banking can get its TBTF cover back, and its fat-cat bonuses guaranteed by the Treasury – again?
Yeah, right: that will be a sure winner for the Fall elections – unlike the healthcare fight, Obama and the Dems are well on the side of public opinion on this issue, and shenanigans like Sen. McConnell’s (like openly lying about a bill) aren’t doing the Repubs many favors. I think that, like HCR, once a strong regulatory bill gets passed, it’s going to stay passed for the remainder of any Democratic Administration. And the GOP are going to end up looking not just like their usual clownish obstructionist selves, but even more blatantly than usual, the tools of Big Money.
Obama FTW.
Again.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Mark S.:
Only that I linked to the wrong fucking article. Here is the right one for that comment. I blame it on a leaky clipboard and me being an idiot. sorry.
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I disagree. At the end of the day, all of the tea bag money raised and all of the tea bag energy is going to go to promoting Republican candidates. I think they’ll end up with a net gain.
All they did was change the nameplate on the most energized part of their base from “Republican” to “Tea Party” , and tweak the funding mechanism.
Tea baggers are disaffected base Republicans. They would have stayed home and closed their wallets, if they were backing “the RNC”, because they’re unhappy with the Party. Now they’ll back “The Tea Party”, which is the same thing.
All the GOP did was rebrand the same old horseshit, and create a “niche” market.
The Populist
I am shocked tea baggers don’t tell the GOP to STFU. This bill makes a ton of sense and brings us back to RATIONAL capitalism with set RULES.
But NOOOOO, we can’t support a smart regulatory law that lays down rules that nobody can question as long as s-lists and black men come up with it.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay: In the short term, you may be right, but longterm they cannot control the fringe crazies and the steady but sure purity distillation toward what the core of the tea party is really about imo, and that is white superiority. Sooner or later that onion will get fully pealed for all to see and the GOP co-option by the tea party will be only a regional party of the south and not competitive nationally.
Then at some point, and maybe beginning with independent runs like with Crist, a new party will emerge, or from being out of power long enough, sane repubs around the country will bring the GOP back into the fold.
The tea bag power we are seeing now is mostly fueled by short term economic woes that will lesson with an improving economy and people feeling better after learning what HCR will do for them.
They may do well in 2010, but I see their star fading by 2012, if you believe like I do, that Obama is the real deal of fine presidenting material, that over time, and a better economic lot, most American’s now on the fence or listening to the tea baggers crazy, will get to also see they have a first rate dude in the WH, despite his skin color that makes them anxious some.
But like always in this country, anything can happen.
Roger Moore
@Svlad Jelly:
That means things like making cheap loans to banks or buying questionable securities at face value. IOW, pumping money into the financial sector as a whole, but not targeting specific institutions.
Mark
Yesterday on XM Left the host played Dodd explaining that the R’s were repeating Luntz’s bailout talking points which were of course the exact opposite of the bill’s intent; but to be used as bailout and bank is a toxic combo. Break to AP news and the the announcer says dems are pushing for a bank reform bill but r’s are wary; then they play tape of McConnell repeating Luntz’s talking point about the bill assuring future bailouts. End of story. Damn you left wing newscsters.
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Sure they can. They won’t have to do anything. The tea baggers themselves are already doing it. They’re moving smartly into the mainstream GOP.
They don’t think they’re fringe or crazy. No one who is ever does. They think they need better marketing, and so that’s what they’re doing, all by themselves. They talk about how they’re misrepresented all the time, and they worry a lot about how they’re viewed.
They’ll be fully integrated into the GOP by 2012.
I think of it like this: it’s like when a huge megacorp launches a “specialty” line. They get newly enthused “select!” customers, but the benefits all still roll right to huge megacorp.
Napoleon
John you failed to mention that the Republicans also with this strategy manage to bring the government that much closer to financial meltdown so they can get rid of Social Security and Medicare.
@kay:
Yep
different church-lady
Honestly I think you’re giving them too much credit: they’re just simply against anything Obama and democrats are for.
Believe me, if Obama figured out a way to cure the common cold, the Republican leadership would concoct a reason to be against it.
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Stuck? Days.
The RNC gets the traditional Republican donors and the PACS hoover up the rest. I think they probably come out ahead.
“Just days after the first widespread tea party demonstrators hit the streets a year ago Thursday, Joe Wierzbicki, a Republican political consultant with the Sacramento firm Russo Marsh + Rogers, made a proposal to his colleagues that he said could “give a boost to our PAC and position us as a growing force/leading force as the 2010 elections come into focus.”
Midnight Marauder
@kay:
But that’s not necessarily true across the board right now. Take the Charlie Crist example the General touched on a moment ago. If Crist actually makes a break for it and decides to run as an Independent, it’s entirely conceivable that the split between Crist taking sane, non-ashamed Republicans and Rubio taking their frothing-at-the-mouth teabagger brethren, could lead to the Democratic candidate Kendrick Meeks stealing the entire thing. Or rather, Crist ekes out the win and agrees to caucus with the Dems (as many rumors having him contemplating at this point in time). Similarly, I believe the addition of a Tea Party candidate on the ballot in Nevada dramatically improves Harry Reid’s chances of winning re-election there.
I agree that, in theory, there isn’t much separation between Republicans and teabaggers–especially when it comes to things like astroturfing and the various big money types who underwrite everything–but when you actually start to see how they respond to real-world election issues, it becomes pretty apparent that a large contingent of teabaggers are extremely to the right of non-teabagging Republicans.
I think one of the next big issues the Tea Party and the Republican Party will have to confront is once the primaries are over and how each group responds to the particular winner of each primary. If some extreme teabagger wins, there’s a strong chance that they’ll drive non-teabagging Republicans to vote Democratic (see Scozzafava, Dede). Conversely, if a “sane” Republican wins the primary, I think there’s a good chance teabagging types might not vote Republican, considering that they view those RINOS as not being conservative enough.
I hear what you’re saying, and I think like Stuck said, there’s a chance that the Tea Party/Republicans have a good showing during these midterms. But I also think there’s an even greater chance that the Republican Party continues to eat itself alive and squanders its golden opportunity to pick up seats in both chambers of Congress.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay: @kay: Yes, but money can’t buy you love, so they say.:)
Liberty60
I was amazed, frankly- while McConnell’s lips were moving, Frank Luntz was drinking a glass of water- it was an astounding show- I am looking forward to the Vegas production.
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I agree. I just think we’re kidding ourselves if we’re banking on them imploding, or hoping for some wholesale rejection of the nastiness and racism, or thinking that the media are going to do their jobs. They could burn Obama in effigy and the bobbleheads would still be insisting they’re angry over tax rates. I think they have burned someone in effigy, haven’t they?
The GOP needed some energized folks to get the vote out to vote for GOP candidates. The Teabagger Message in no way conflicts with larger Republicans goals. Nice fit, as the PR firm memo mentioned.
Now, they have them.
Admiral_Komack
“It’s just that simple. McConnell was selling the country and the American taxpayer down the river for a chance at flooding the airwaves with campaign ads funded by Wall Street, made possible by the right wing Supreme Court.”
-He’s a Republican, isn’t he?
It’s what they do.
Admiral_Komack
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
-The RNC would say you’re wrong…and they have the paid hookers to prove it.
ksmiami
Yes, but the myth of the disaffected base Republican voter not voting is just that – a myth and there is a lot of evidence that even with sub par candidates, GOP base voters get their vote out; it’s just that their numbers are smaller and smaller compared to the center democrat (notice I did not say center left) coalition, so the Tea bag show is really a whole lot of nothing except a PR campaign….
fuyura
“…And oh, by the way, we are getting rid of your board and you, too.”
This looks like one of the main objections they have to the bill, whether it’s voiced or not.
CreativeAnarchy
“What the fuck is “system-wide liquidity support”? What does that mean?”
It means they’re going to piss all over everyone that doesn’t support their ambitions for irresponsible power and wealth.